


Bravo-28

by Churbooseanon



Series: Guns For Hire [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Guns For Hire AU, Mercenaries, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 13:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2470373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She begins with a name and a place she doesn't know. She ends with the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bravo-28

**Author's Note:**

> A Tex origin story for Guns for Hire, or my take on it.

They name her Bravo-28. 

It's not really a name, and she knows that. The problem is that she doesn't know any better, can't give them something else, can't correct them. What she does know is that she's thirteen years old. What she does know is that she's lost something. What she does know is that she doesn't remember anything but waking up in a a room that smelled of antiseptic and steel. 

There is a doctor when she wakes, and he tells her that her name is Bravo-28, and she doesn't really have a choice but to believe because she has nothing to argue against it. There is a piece of plastic covered paper around her wrist. It identifies her as Bravo-28, blood type AB negative, date of birth unknown, age unknown. The doctor explains that she's safe, that she's with Control, an Control provides. The very thought of it makes her sick. She can't explain why. The doctor tells her she has always been here. Will always be here.

She looks at her arms. There are marks all along the insides of them, near her elbow. Sometime in her head says that it comes from needles. She doesn't feel like counting them because it makes her sick. Makes her think of being unable to move. Not that she can explain why. It makes her chest ache in ways she explain either, and it makes her eyes sting. So she stops looking and listens to the doctor. 

A man all in black comes in, looks at her. Nods and gestures. 

She follows. 

Not like there is anything else she can do. 

* * * * * *

He tells her his name is Sir. Bravo doesn't bother to point out that 'sir' isn't a name, it's a title. Then again, neither is Bravo-28, but who is she to argue? She's a little girl with a gun in her hand and no bullets. Sir tells her the parts of the pistol in her hand. If she doesn't parrot them back perfectly, she doesn't get dinner. They spends days like this all of the time. Today is a test. She gets to cover five different types of pistols, three shotguns, and four assault rifles. He'd promised her pudding if she manages to get it all right without any mistakes. 

The track marks have healed, they don't wrap her head anymore. Her eyes don't get blurry when she isn't focused long enough. They don't make her wear the plasticized paper anymore. They don't remind her over and over that her name is Bravo-28. She answers to Bravo because she'd expected to. 

A hand smacks up the back of her head. His voice snaps and pulls her back to the task at hand. 

There won't be pudding. 

It's okay, she decides as she dismantles the pistol under Sir's careful gaze. Their pudding comes in little plastic cups and that's wrong. It should be home made from little boxes. She would whip it together with her favorite wire whisk. Whip it together with milk until it was thick and creamy, and sweet on her tongue. But she doesn't get to do that. Her meals come on a steel tray in a small room that is just her bed, her desk, and a small dresser with the same soft black pants, the same soft black shirt, and the same thing day in and day out. 

She hates it here. But she doesn't know anything else. 

* * * * * *

They bring a boy into her room. He's just a little bit bigger than her, but he's scrawny. Thin in a way that she is, except she can't see muscle on him. This boy hasn't worked as hard in her life as she has these last months. Or years. She doesn't know anymore. Time is fluid and she doesn't quite know anymore. They don't tell her the date. But they bring the boy into her room. 

There is something about him that makes her nervous. Something about his short cropped black hair. Something about the way they have his eyes covered with a strip of cloth. The way he's gagged. The way he kneels there, clearly terrified and shaking. 

Sir gives her a gun. Guides her hand so it's pressed against the boy's temple. 

There are bullets this time. 

He tells her to shoot the boy. 

There is something about him that bothers her. Something that starts her stomach churning and her hands shaking and her head spinning. It's the hair, she decides. It looks a bit like the doctor who took care of her when she woke up. Has to be that. And yet her hand is shaking. 

No. She's Bravo-28. She won't be weak. 

She flips the safety off. Breathes. Pulls the trigger. 

She can never stop seeing the red on the floor, long after it's cleaned up.

* * * * * *

They give her a shotgun, four spike grenades, a machine pistol, and a helmet. They drop her in the middle of a factory complex. 

The task is to escape. Leave no one alive. 

An alarm goes off. 

Bravo is a blur of motion. This is what she's been training to do for years. She can handle it. While she still can she can she takes the people she finds down with her fists and feet. Kicks that knock them to their knees before she reaches down and breaks their necks. Once it starts picking up she moves to the machine pistol. It's the best way to handle people at a distance. When they get too close it's the shotgun, even a spike grenade or two. 

It takes her an hour until she's standing in the middle of the carnage and there is nothing, no one, left standing but her. Her left arm is broken, she's out of bullets, and her helmet's visor is cracked. She doesn't know why they gave her it. No one here had bothered to wear one. She had gotten to see every last look when she had killed these people. Maybe it was to make her a nightmare, in case anyone survived. 

She limps to the front doors, which have been chained shut. She sighs, moves into a side room. Finds a high window. Climbs up, breaks it, tumbles out. 

The pick her up and inform her that they are proud. Bravo literally could not give any fucks. 

They tell her she's finally passed the final test. She doesn't care. 

They tell her she's going to be one of their best operatives. She doesn't care. 

They tell her she's going to a planet called Adaptive. 

Something about that makes her sick. 

* * * * * *

“Just who the hell is she supposed to be?”

Bravo doesn't look to the other Control mercenary. Her briefing told her that his name is Felix. She thinks he talks too much. The other one, Locus, who is covering them with a sniper rifle, is better. He's quiet on the comm, just watching them. She can feel his eyes on her. 

“Doesn't matter,” Bravo answers, her eyes behind them, watching the hall. “Just do your job. You aren't paid to ask questions.”

“He does it anyway,” Locus responds over the comm. 

“Unprofessional,” she laments. 

“Quite,” Locus agrees. 

“Fuck you both,” Felix counters angrily. 

* * * * * *

She stands above a child. 

She stands above a child with a gun in her hand and an order to kill him. 

The file hadn't said that her target was eight. The file had just said that Control had assigned her to this job. That the son of a wealthy man had to die to get something done. She hadn't cared to ask. 

The little boy looks up at her with tears in his eyes. 

Bravo drops her gun, turns her back, walks away.

She listens to the voice of her operator in her ear, demanding that she go back.

Bravo rips off her helmet and throws it aside. Heads back out of the safe house. Better to die to the plague clouds than go this far. 

Control will hate her for this. They will send people after her for this. They will try to kill her. 

She can't find it in her to care. 

* * * * * *

They named her Bravo-28. 

They took her as a child and made her a tool. 

They made her kill.

She walks away. 

There isn't much to say beyond that. 

Except for the thing that matters most. 

She doesn't know her name. 

She can't live with theirs. 

She becomes the Soldier instead. Becomes Texas. Becomes a tool with no guiding hand.


End file.
